her mother to see how much Jerome Edwards looked like his father. "It
gave me quite a turn when I see him come out, he looked so much like
his father, for all he's so small," said she. "He walked out just
like him; I declare, I didn't know but he'd come back."

Jerome, leading the horse, walked back to the barn in his father's
old tracks, with his father's old gait, reproducing the dead with the
unconscious mimicry of the living, while the two women across the
field watched him from their window. "It ain't a good sign--he's got
a hard life before him," said the older of the two, who had wild blue
eyes under a tousle of gray hair, and was held in somewhat dubious
repute because of spiritualistic tendencies.

"Guess he'll have a hard life enough, without any signs--most of us
do. He won't have to make shirts, anyhow," rejoined her daughter, who
had worn out her youth with fine stitching of linen shirts for a Jew
peddler. Then she settled back over her needle-work with a heavy
sigh, indicative of a return from the troubles of others to her own.

Jerome fed the old horse, and rubbed him down carefully. "Sha'n't be
sold whilst I'm alive," he assured him, with a stern nod, as he
combed out his forelock, and the animal looked at him again, with
that strange attention which is so much like the attention of
understanding.

After his tasks in the barn were done Jerome went out to the sloping
garden and finished planting the beans. He could see Elmira's smooth
dark head passing to and fro before the house windows, and knew that
she was fulfilling his instructions.